Aaron Swartz Explains Why The NSA Needs To Be Stopped

from the from-beyond-the-grave dept

Last week, when we wrote about the big "day of action" against the NSA in memory of Aaron Swartz, to be held February 11th, a few folks questioned whether this was an appropriate issue, since they were unaware of Aaron being all that concerned about the NSA. Obviously, Aaron died months before the Snowden leaks, but as many folks who knew Aaron knew, the NSA was absolutely an issue he was quite concerned about even prior to the Snowden leaks. Brian Knappenberger, who has been working to put the finishing touches on his new documentary about Aaron, The Internet's Own Boy, in order to debut it at Sundance, has released an astounding trailer of the film (which looks amazing). Included in it, are multiple clips of Aaron actually speaking out about the NSA and surveillance, mainly focused on the NSA saying it can't possibly calculate how many Americans it's spying on, because to do so, would be either (a) impossible or (b) would violate their privacy (yes, at one point, they actually said figuring out how many people are being spied on would violate their privacy).

So, yes, Aaron was quite concerned about the NSA, and it makes you wonder just how much we all lost in his death, because you have to expect that, as with SOPA, Aaron would have been an instrumental force in fighting back against the NSA as its overreach and abuses have been exposed. If you haven't yet, please go check out TheDayWeFightBack.org to learn more about the day of action.

sigh

Re: sigh

I'm not sure if this'll make it seem any better, but I think a large part of that is that most people don't even know about the problems.

For those still getting their news from the newspapers and MSM sources, they've likely only run across a few small bits of information about all this mess, and only the pro-NSA/spying side, with few exceptions.

Re: sigh

Nope, you're too busy being divided into cults by a political elite that doesn't need to give a damn about its citizens. You're too busy being dragged around by an elite that wants to feed you anti-intellectual bullshit so that you literally cannot argue against them. You're too busy agreeing with the collective lies that your elite is feeding you.